Influence of Rural Social Capital and Production Mode on the Subjective Well-Being of Farmers and Herdsmen: Empirical Discovery on Farmers and Herdsmen in Inner Mongolia

Evaluating the Impact of Institutional Performance and Government Trust on Farmers' Subjective Well-Being: A Case of Urban-Rural Welfare Gap Perception and Family Economic Status in Shaanxi, Sichuan and Anhui, China

In the modern world, fostering comprehensive social sustainability has become one of the major concerns. Interestingly, rural livelihood may significantly comprise the compelling performance evaluations of governmental institutions' performances. Governmental institutions' performances in rural areas largely depend on whether they can gain relatively higher trust levels of marginal farmers. However, the critical interaction between these two prospects may foster farmers' subjective well-being (SWB). Therefore, the study aims to model and test institutional performance, government trust, and farmers' subjective well-being by utilising a survey of data from 963 farmer households in Shaanxi, Sichuan, and Anhui provinces, China. We have adopted structural equation modelling (SEM) to craft the study's findings. However, in the literature, political performance is widely quantified by the urban-rural welfare and economic status gap; thus, in the core model, we have incorporated and measured the mediating role of the urban-rural welfare gap and household economic status. The results show that institutional performance, social insurance performance, and ecological livability performance have a significant and positive impact on institutional performance and government trust and eventually derive farmers' SWB. However, the role of environmental livability performance is more substantial than social insurance performance in quantifying governmental trust and institutional performance. Moreover, it has a significant positive impact on the subjective well-being of farmers, and the effect of policy trust is not substantial. The results of further mediation and moderation effects show that social insurance performance and ecological livability performance can enhance the subjective well-being of farmers through the indirect transmission of institutional trust. In contrast, the mediating impact of policy trust is not significant. For farmers with higher economic status, institutional performance has a more substantial effect on the subjective well-being of farmers with a relatively smaller perception of the urban-rural welfare gap and lower family economic status.

Measurement and identification of relative poverty level of pastoral areas: an analysis based on spatial layout

Pastoral areas are the key difficulty in China's pursuit of common prosperity and a key region for China to build the northern ecological safety barrier and to realize the Two Centenary Goals. It is of great significance to scientifically evaluate the quality of rural life (QRL), measure the relative poverty level (RPL), and identify the relatively poor areas, making it possible to dock poverty elimination with rural revitalization. Based on the socio-economic data of 18 pastoral areas in Inner Mongolia, this paper draws on spatial layout theory to evaluate QRL and measures RPL by the natural breakpoint method and then identifies the relatively poor areas in Inner Mongolia. The results show that (1) the QRLs of pastoral areas in Inner Mongolia were unbalanced and highly polarized. The mean score of QRLs was 0.2598. Eleven (61.11%) of the counties/banners had a QRL smaller than the mean score. On the spatial layout of QRLs, the western areas were stronger than the central areas. High QRL counties/banners are mainly concentrated in the western region. In the central region, the QRLs were very fragmented, falling onto all five levels. (2) The pastoral areas in Inner Mongolia differed significantly in RPL. The mean score of RPL stood at 0.3788. Nine counties/banners (50%) had an RPL greater than the mean. Contrary to the spatial layout features of QRLs, the central pastoral areas in Inner Mongolia had stronger RPLs than the eastern ones. High RPL counties/banners are mostly clustered in the central region. The spatial layout of RPLs is relatively reasonable in the central region: the RPLs decreased gradually from Dorbod Banner. (3) Nearly 45% of the pastoral areas in central and western Inner Mongolia face serious relative poverty and a high risk of returning to poverty. Eight counties/banners (45%) were identified as high composite relative poverty areas. From spatial layout, the composite relatively poor counties/banners clustered clearly, mainly in the western region. Finally, this paper establishes a warning mechanism against large-scale returning to poverty, aiming to lower composite RPL. The research results provide empirical reference and implementation path for consolidating the results of poverty eradication and facilitating rural revitalization.